Dr David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was born in Wales, on December 20, 1899, to be one of three boys in a Welsh Calvanist Methodist family.
When he was ten a fire destroyed the family home and permanently impacted the family finances. This gave young David a serious approach to life, such that he said, “I never had an adolescence”.
In his village of Llangeitho he and his brothers joined the local church, under instruction from their minister. But David did not have a living faith.
In 1916 he went to London to study medicine and excelled, heading for a prosperous careers as a Harley Street medical specialist. In London he attended Charing Cross Chapel, where he met his wife to be. Lloyd-Jones also began to investigate what true Christianity was, discovering that he had not really been a Christian at all. In an undramatic process of study David came to a genuine faith, but lamented that no-one had ever made the gospel plain to him.
The reality of his faith led him, at the age of 27 to give up his promising career as a Harley Street specialist, and with his young wife, Bethan, return to the land of his fathers. And there, in South Wales, he entered the Christian ministry, in a small Calvinistic Methodist Church, in Sandfields, Aberavon.
He preached his first sermon on 28 November, 1926. His text on that occasion was I Corinthians 2:2 – “I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”
Influenced by Puritan writers whom he had consumed, yet without formal theological training, the fresh young minister determined to preach only the Bible and to do it so clearly that it would bring life to those who heard him. This fresh and Biblical approach stood out in his day and won him an audience around Wales, Great Britain and America and Canada.
On November 28, 1935 “The Doctor” (as he came to be known) preached in London’s Albert Hall and was heard by G Morgan Campbell, the 72 year old pastor of London’s Westminster Chapel. Campbell invited Lloyd-Jones to be his assistant and successor, which, after some deliberation, The Doctor accepted in September 1938, taking his wife and two daughters to live in London.
G. Campbell Morgan retired in 1943 and Lloyd-Jones soon established Westminster Chapel as the “foremost evangelical pulpit in England.”
For the last 20 years of his ministry at Westminster Chapel the average Sunday attendance was 1,500 in the morning and 2,000 at night.
Verse by verse he traversed the great books of Scripture, delivering 60 sermons on “The Sermon on the Mount”, preaching for 13 years on Romans chapters 1-14. His six volumes of printed sermons on Ephesians total 2,235 pages.
His challenge to evangelicals to separate from the mainline churches in 1966 brought the wrath of some fellow evangelicals upon his head. But by pen and from pulpit Martyn Lloyd-Jones continued to “contend for the faith once delivered unto the saints.”
Some have called him the greatest preacher of the 20th century, but he also supported many other Christian projects, such as the Evangelical Library, Inter Varsity Fellowship, Puritan Conference, ‘Banner of Truth’ Publishing and The Evangelical Magazine.
He preached his last sermon on June 8, 1980 and went home to the Lord on March 1, 1981.
This post is based on notes by my late friend Donald Prout. I have updated these historical posts with information gleaned from other sources. I am indebted to Don for awakening in me an interest in Church History. Don’s notes can be found at: www.donaldprout.com